


peerless

by storiesfortravellers



Category: The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Devotion, Established Relationship, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 13:37:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16996017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: Scenes with Achilles and Patroclus, from the night before they leave for Troy until the end.For dorianpavus for the requests for:Character and relationship studies, stolen momentsThanks for giving such a cool gamut of prompts! Hope you like!





	peerless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dorianpavus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorianpavus/gifts).



> Content notes: Includes canonical character deaths (for both the Iliad and Greek myth), including brief mention of minors who fight in war and minors who are killed in canon, and brief mentions of canonical practices of enslaving women captured in war and sometimes marrying them (there is no explicit discussion of nonconsensual sex but it is implied that these women fear it, and clearly there is no real consent regardless if the women are captured). None of these issues are explored or problematized as they are normalized by these characters and time period, so please be aware if reading this content will upset you.
> 
> These are snippets in between the big plot events of the Iliad and after, and the plot events largely go unexplained. If it's been a while since you've read the Iliad or if you haven't had a chance to read it, there are a some explanatory end notes to make it easier. 
> 
> Also, I've used "Greeks" instead of "Achaeans" for simplicity's sake. Don't be mad, classicists <3

_Patroclus: Before the War_

Here, and here alone, he is conquered.

Achilles lies on his back in the soft grasses, which are green with the lateness of spring. I pull his tunic up, and his body submits to the motion, allows me to pull the cloth up over his arms and toss it aside.

He is laid bare for me. Muscled flesh. Hairs, light, in the center of his chest, around his navel. Dark freckles on his shoulder, as if he were kissed by an ill-controlled flame.

He is smiling at me, his lips soft and full. He is inviting me to take him, to have my fill of him. 

We leave for Troy tomorrow.

I have never been jealous of his strength or his speed. But in this moment, I wish I had the power to best him. I wish I could hold him here, grip his wrists and press them into the ground, keep his body among the grasses and weeds, amid the small yellow flowers that are fading already. 

I want to force him to stay in Phthia, away from the lies and swords of old men, away from prophecies of death and glory.

But I’m not strong enough to keep him here, and he’s not weak enough to want to stay.

I smile down at him, and he discerns that my happiness is false – he is perceptive, more than others know. But I lean down and kiss him, my lips against his, and he yields, his mouth soft and open, eager to be overcome.

For this -- for me -- Achilles always surrenders.

 

Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π

 

_Achilles at Troy_

I have heard stories all of my life of the ardors of war.

As it turns out, war is easy.

All of the Myrmidons fight bravely and well. Among our men, Patroclus’ honor is second only to mine. He also heals the wounded, and comforts the captured. The other Greeks admire him, as is right. 

Pride pushes at my ribs whenever he kills a fearsome prince or brandishes a Trojan prize. He is beautiful when he comes back to the ships from battle, wet with sweat, clothes splattered with enemy blood. 

He is always beautiful of course. But when he comes back from battle, _all_ the Greek armies can see his beauty, his strength. 

It is only just.

They see my strength too, of course -- none of the Greek warriors can compare to me. Most of them fear me, which both pleases me and amuses Patroclus. They say that I’m the only reason that Hector has not come to slaughter us at our ships, and I believe it. 

Today, I defeated a young Trojan prince. He was, perhaps, fourteen, maybe a year more. When he was on the ground, afraid that I would run him through with my spear, he cried and begged for his life. I was ashamed for him, that he would lack courage, but I did feel pity. I bound his hands, threw him onto my chariot and brought him back to the ships. He’ll be ransomed for a fine prize.

After, I return to the field and kill many more men. A few, those who were wise enough to surrender, I capture for ransom too.

At the camps, in the evening, prizes for the day are announced. I am given a woman, a princess of Troy, not much older than the boy I captured earlier.

She cries to the gods, asks why they have let her be taken by a brute who has killed so much of her family. 

But this is the way of war, the way of the world, and it is strange that she doesn’t know this. I have not touched her but she sits in my tent and weeps and screams.

“She fears you,” Patroclus tells me privately.

“She shouldn’t. I’m not cruel when I'm not on the battlefield. And even then, usually not.”

“But how could she know that? She only knows you by the stories of your sword.”

I sigh. “Will you talk to her?”

“And what should I say?” he asks.

“What do you think will calm her down?”

Patroclus pauses. “She wants to know the kind of future you have in mind for her.”

I nod. Women who are taken want to be honored as wives, not kept as slaves. “Tell her that I will be kind and take her back to my father’s palace to marry her. When he passes on, she’ll be the wife of a king, and have many children. Tell her that no one will mistreat her.” 

“That will comfort her,” Patroclus says, patting me on the shoulder, and he goes to my tent to speak with her. I wish for a moment that he would be jealous, but he is not. He is relieved, probably, that I have chosen to act with pity.

He always wants me to be full of virtue -- which, I suppose, is not the worst trait for a companion to have.

But still, I am glad that he approves. This is how it is between us, always. I desperately want Patroclus to be pleased with me, while he pretends that he is offering counsel, a mere suggestion, to his prince.

 

Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π

 

_Patroclus at Troy_

Achilles adapts well to the life of war. 

I adapt too.

I hear all the reasons why we are here: for honor, for glory, for a name that lasts generations, for justice for Menelaus, to reclaim Menelaus’ manhood and therefore stand up for all Greek men, for vengeance against those who flout the rules of hospitality, for the wealth of Troy….

The list is long and changes by the day. But for some strange reason... I am moved. This is the first war in which all of the Greek lands fight together on the same side. As we live alongside our Greek brothers for months, then years, it is easy to feel that we Greeks owe something to one another, that we share this war in a way that puts other wars to shame. It is easy to feel that when we finally grip our fingers into the heart of Troy, the triumph will be great for reasons that go beyond honor and prizes.

Achilles is the best of us all, unsurprisingly. He fights for his name, but when he is very drunk, he sometimes has his doubts about if he’d be better off growing old at home. In these moments, I offer to steal away with him, to sail home at night. We could make up some premise, I assure him, say his father is ill to maintain our reputations. But he always says no, even after I pour more wine. 

So on the matter of war, I am heartened to be here, I would lay my life down for the Greeks, and yet I still want to hold Achilles down in the yellow grasses of Phthia, to make him forget the world’s clamor of shields. My heart runs in two directions, it seems.

Achilles does not feel this way about the Greeks. He cares for his honor – greatly, as is right – and he gets along well with Ajax, with some others, but he finds Odysseus too clever by half, and he sneers whenever Agamemnon gives a speech. He is not accepted into the circle of old men in charge, the ones who endlessly confer, and yet he is the greatest warrior; he leads us into battle but he is not a leader of the Greeks, other than to the Myrmidons.

The Greeks all adore him, except for those who don’t. 

Sometimes I worry what will come of that. Achilles is not one to take slights lightly.

On other matters, however, I am far less worried now. When we first came to Troy, I feared that all the adulation would change him. It didn’t make him any prouder, of course; for all his splendors, he has been as proud as a lion since he was a toddling boy. But he is the strongest, the swiftest, the most graceful, and the most beautiful of all the Greeks, and every man and woman in the camps has noticed, even those who despise him. Still, in all this time, Achilles has not turned his attention toward them. I am his and he is mine, as much as ever.

As a prince, he has a right to his own tent, but we share one still.

In the morning hours, before we head to the battlefield, he sits on the floor, playing his lyre, chatting with me as if we were still boys playing on his family’s palace floors. I joke that he would make a fine bard after the war, and he promises to write me many odes. 

Sometimes he comes back from battle with hostages, young princes that he took alive. He makes a point to set them down gently where I can see them, like a young shepherd leaving flowers at the feet of his beloved. He wants me to see that he is full of mercy, that he is not just the most beautiful and the greatest warrior but also full of pity and kindness. 

I think, sometimes, that even after all our years together, he is trying to seduce me still. He is skilled at it, I admit. His strength, the dexterity of his hands and his feet, are beautiful, but he knows that there are things he does that fill me with far greater devotion, that make me want to hold him so tightly that neither of us can breathe. 

Achilles becomes a greater warrior, a more eternal name, by the day. But other than that, he has not changed at all. He is as stubborn, as powerful, as fragile, and as wondrous as ever. He still looks at me with such hunger, such magnificent need, as if I were the last bit of air he gulps down before he drowns.

Nothing has ever been - could ever be - more seductive. I think that there is nothing I would not do for him.

 

Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π

 

_Achilles on the shore_

I can tell that Patroclus has concerns. After Agamemnon's insult, I will not fight for him. I will sit by my ships until it is time to return home. 

But of course I have noticed that Patroclus disapproves. It always hurts him, to do nothing while others suffer.

It doesn't hurt me, though. I'm glad when the Greek armies lose, when they die pathetically because I am not there. 

It is just. 

When Agamemnon sends his paltry gifts, a silly attempt to get me to give up my anger, I tell that fool's embassy that they could give a hundred times as many gifts, or a thousand, and I would not bend. 

Patroclus has held his tongue until now, though clearly it has been misery to him. But I know that his silence will now be short-lived.

That night, after the day of Agamemnon's embassy, as Patroclus and I lie on our mat after lovemaking, he says, “I’m returning to the war.”

“Are you?” I ask, as if I were simply curious.

He looks at me, discerning. “You could stop me. If you publicly forbade it, I would be obligated to obey. Otherwise, it would be an insult to your house.”

“I would never do that to you,” I say with a sigh. He knows this. It is a joke, practically, this idea that I own him, that I command him, when it is clear as sky that he owns me.

“Will you fight alongside me?” he asks. 

The question burns.

Sometimes I think he uses words as well, and as brutally, as I use a sword. He knows that it will taste like poison to say no. 

Finally, I answer: “I’d rather walk through a thousand fires than help Agamemnon to victory.”

At long last he responds, “ I still have to fight.”

“I know.”

“Thank you.”

I can tell that he is worried that I will see this as betrayal, that I will be angry at him for being a better man than I. 

“You should wear my armor. It will terrify the Trojans if they think I am back. It will give you an advantage.”

He smiles, grateful. Then he runs his thumb along my jaw, soft, as if I were breakable, and I close my eyes. Soon I feel his mouth on mine, his tongue, and I think what a fool he is to think I could ever be angry at him. I slide my hands up to feel his waist, his chest, below his tunic, to feel the strength of him hovering over me, intoxicating, and I am weak.

 

Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π

 

_Achilles at the Pyre_

A Trojan prince, not fourteen yet, is standing in front of me, hands tied. He is sobbing, begging for his life.

I have no pity left. I throw him on Patroclus’ funeral pyre, and the rest of the crying men after.

Patroclus deserves to be honored fiercely and without remorse. I can give him nothing less.

 

Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π Π

 

_Achilles, scaling the Trojan walls_

Sharp, like fire, like a blade.

I feel the arrow slide into the sinew of my ankle, the pain of it, thick with promise.

I think of Patroclus’ hands on my arms, my wrists. His smile on a dry winter’s day. 

I think of the world of warriors, the world that comes after this world, and of the games we will play together there. I think of ashes, his and mine, mingling in a red earthen bowl. 

I have enough strength to bloody my spear with more Trojans, so I keep fighting, even as I feel the strength seep out of me, my blood dark and cold. 

I will be with him soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Chronology:  
> Part 1 is before they leave for Troy (before the Iliad starts), where all the Greeks have gathered to fight the Trojans. Some backstory is here if you want it: https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/The_Myths/Trojan_War/trojan_war.html
> 
> Parts 2 and 3 are Achilles' and Patroclus' perspectives while fighting at Troy (again, before the Iliad Book I starts). Part 2 is about Achilles and Patroclus talking about Briseis, the Trojan princess who was 'given' to Achilles as a war-prize. 
> 
> Part 4 is after Book IX of the Iliad, when Achilles refuses the lavish gifts and still won't fight. The story changes canon in that Achilles offers his armor first, rather than Patroclus asking. 
> 
> Part 5 is of course after Patroclus is killed; in Book XXIII of the Iliad, Achilles throws 12 Trojan captives into the fire, and it is possible that some were youths.
> 
> Part 6 is from an ancient Greek version (of several) of the myth of Achilles' death but takes place after the events of Homer's Iliad are done.


End file.
